


There is a Light that Never Goes Out

by quietrook



Category: Eerie Crests, Eerie Crests (Webcomic)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pining, malek solh is a better musician than vaguely popular band the smiths apparently, math is garbage and dallas's mortal enemy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 08:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10272194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietrook/pseuds/quietrook





	

_Take me out tonight, where there’s music and there’s people who are young and alive_

Earbuds in, Dallas leaned over his desk and forced his eyes to stay open, staring at his math textbook. The numbers jumbled together and danced in time to the Smiths and all he could think was that Morrissey’s voice could never match up to Malek’s. His best friend had been idly playing the song earlier and it repeated in Dallas’s head over and over since the other boy had left his house. Dallas let his head fall to rest on the smooth, glossy pages of fucked up algebraic shit and closed his eyes.

_I thought, Oh god, my chance has come at last_

His hands fumbled for his iPod and it slipped out of his hoodie pocket onto the floor, taking his earbuds with it. He stared at it for a moment, watching the song play on, watching the bar get closer to the end of the song. Then, he reached for it and pressed pause. If he could only pause the music that kept playing in his head. Frustrated, he left his iPod on the floor and returned to his textbook. He and Malek had just covered this material in their last tutoring session, but Dallas couldn’t focus, couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do. His notes seemed to wiggle and move until they were unintelligible, and he blinked a few times until they stayed still.

According to the problem, he was supposed to create an algebraic equation for the function on a graph, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of the image in the book. It was a good twenty minutes of staring at it before he finally got what it meant, and then he had to figure out how to express it in an equation. He shut his book in one smooth motion, resigning to finish it later. (He wasn’t going to finish it later.)

Dallas leaned back in his chair and stared at his ceiling. It was covered in plastic, glow in the dark stars that he, Poppy, and Malek had put up one night just for the fun of it. They tried to make real constellations out of what they had, and Dallas could see the formations but couldn’t remember any of the names. Either way, it was comforting. He smiled sadly; he always missed them when they weren’t around. With a sigh, he straightened up and pushed his chair away from his desk. Almost as an afterthought, he bent down to collect his iPod and wrapped the earbuds around it, turned it off, and set it next to his math textbook. He then stood and stretched.

He had had enough of sitting and working for the day. Dallas went to stand in front of his window, looking out at the night sky. It was open a crack, and a cool wind blew the curtains around the frame. Dallas wished he could see Malek’s shadow out there, waiting to come in, but that would mean something bad had happened. He wished Malek would come over unexpected just to see him, sometime. He wanted to talk to someone about it, but he didn’t want to bother Poppy again, and no one else knew. A sigh; keeping it all inside was starting to hurt, but he would rather hurt then say something and ruin one of his greatest friendships.

Dallas shut the window and closed the curtains.

Climbing up into bed, he pulled his phone from his pants pocket. He had no messages, but he went to his contacts and clicked on Malek’s name, beginning to draft a message. It wasn’t flowing correctly, and he deleted the text and started over.

_Hey, Malek, just wondered what you were up to_

No, that wasn’t good.

_I don’t get this math problem at all._

No; he didn’t want to focus on math anymore, and Malek, once started, would not let him trail off topic. He sighed and tugged his sweater off over his head, throwing it on the floor and leaving him in just his binder. He couldn’t think of anything that sounded casual enough without being forced. Frustrated, he typed his true feelings into the phone, wishing he could send it just once:

_Malek Solh, I love you_

He stared at it for a moment, frowning at the text. His thumb hovered over the backspace key.

“Dallas!” His sister burst into his room and, startled, Dallas let his thumb fall down onto a button. He looked down, hoping, pleading with himself that it wasn’t the enter key, but there it was, sent into the void of cyberspace: _Malek Solh, I love you._

He panicked. He threw his phone across the room and, trying not to descend into anxious tears, shooed his sister out of the room and closed his door firmly, locking it (as if it mattered; there was a key to it in the house). He slowly climbed into his bed and pulled the covers up to his neck.

Dallas stared at the ceiling, stared at the constellations that wouldn’t glow in the light of his room, until his eyes started to close. He fell asleep like that, in his binder and with the light on, and it wasn’t until the next morning that he would see Malek’s response:

_I love you too, Dallas._


End file.
